Hello

I have moved Windows 10 default created folders like "Documents", "Music", "Pictures" etc. to my E partition, and would like to know whether I can safely format the C partition and reinstall Windows without losing data in these folders, or do I need to backup all these folders again to another device before doing so?

Thanks.

If there are no backups, it's not safe enough. As the other have said before:

No backup, no data.

We only lose what we don't backup.

My take is if it's not backed up, it wasn't worth backing up.

My suggestion is to install the free version of Macrium and take a complete image of your C partition. Also create bootable recovery media (a small USB memory stick) using the tools from within Macrium. Then you can reformat and re-install Windows. If you find that you are missing any files you can mount the Macrium image as a virtual drive and browse/recover any missing files. As a bonus, if the install goes horribly wrong you can always restore the old image after booting off the previously created recovery USB.

commented: To which they always ask me "So I should have backups?" +16

Thanks for the advice guys, will do my back-up and then proceed

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.